I think it is more of a social problem we can’t solve with code.
As methods of communication get cheaper and more accessible, it opens the world up to see what humanity is, not what humanity wants itself to be.
People that maliciously attack those online are broken people. Broken people exist in reality, thus broken people will exist online.
Google and Facebook can write code to stop harassment, but they can’t do so without marginalizing people who are already on the fringes of society. Plus, their system can be gamed. The output of such changes would mean that it would stop some harassment at the cost of losing accessibility for everyone and a meta game playing in the background that costs the corporations engineering resources.
The best answer right now, in my opinion, is to create tools to fight harassment, but give those tools to the users of the site rather than automated algorithms. A good example of this is a mute feature. Other tools like customized word filters, block lists and safe lists can also help empower users.
I’ve got a solution. Have each domain need to reflect the nation of its authorship. Ie a U.K. vlog has to post to a .uk domain. Really only meant for the big media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, FB, etc. What they would see at the .com site is all of their local content maybe with a trending globally section.
As methods of communication get cheaper and more accessible, it opens the world up to see what humanity is, not what humanity wants itself to be.
People that maliciously attack those online are broken people. Broken people exist in reality, thus broken people will exist online.
Google and Facebook can write code to stop harassment, but they can’t do so without marginalizing people who are already on the fringes of society. Plus, their system can be gamed. The output of such changes would mean that it would stop some harassment at the cost of losing accessibility for everyone and a meta game playing in the background that costs the corporations engineering resources.
The best answer right now, in my opinion, is to create tools to fight harassment, but give those tools to the users of the site rather than automated algorithms. A good example of this is a mute feature. Other tools like customized word filters, block lists and safe lists can also help empower users.